


When We Were Falling

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [231]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: AU Where They Both Say Yes, Crash Landing, F/M, First Kiss, Post-Throne Room, Virgin Ben Solo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-30 22:45:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17837423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: Rey and Kylo escape Snoke's cruiser together, but their flight doesn't last very long.





	When We Were Falling

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Midnight is for lovers lost in time and place. Prompt from this [generator](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).

The sky was screaming.

They were falling, that much Rey knew, falling from some great and terrible height and the night, everything that surrounded them, was bellowing as it wrenched itself apart.

She wasn’t afraid. That was the odd thing. There was no fear in her heart or even that sick sense of dread she usually felt when some part of the  _Falcon_ gave a hiccup in midflight that went on too long. But then, they weren’t on the _Falcon_ , were they, but in some rattletrap shuttlecraft that had been barely flyable to begin with, half-scorched as it had been by the death throes of Snoke’s cruiser. Between the two of them, she and Kylo, they’d only managed to coax it out of the hanger and into chaos before the rest of the cruiser had exploded and taken Snoke’s body to the depths of hell or beyond.

She wondered if the Jedi believed in hell. An odd time to wonder it, perhaps, as the face of an unfamiliar world rushed towards her and death breathed loud in her ear, but still. She wondered. And decided she didn’t care.

It’d been a popular myth on Jakku, the existence of a place all the species called hell. A place for those who’d wronged the universe, who’d cheated it, who’d taken what wasn’t theirs: a life, perhaps, or more likely, property. Hell was where the bad beings went, the ones--or so it went on Jakku--who weren’t smart enough to know their place. She didn’t remember ever giving it thought, this hell, not really, and yet now, with the end looming ever larger and close, it seemed to have swallowed her mind.

Would she burn, then, as the whispers went? Had she done so much wrong in fighting alongside the sworn enemy of the Jedi, righteous purpose or no, that this was what the universe had in store?

She felt her hand around the controls, felt Kylo’s hand atop hers, pushing with co-equal strength, both of them willing the ‘craft to lift its nose up just enough for them to crash parallel into the ground rather than smash face first into it and still, though they were far below the stars now, far closed to dirt and rocks and earth, she heard the sky screaming as if the Old Ones themselves were tearing its fabric asunder.

 _Let go_ , the stars said, soft voices in the maelstrom.  _Stop holding on to what was and open yourself to what will be._

She closed her eyes and turned her hand and wound her fingers through Kylo’s and she felt him startle, felt the instinct loud in him to run. But he held on. Through the fire and the maw of coming death, again, he held on to her even as he trembled, his body shaking from tumult, from fear.

He was afraid. She was not. And yet between their palms, in the quick, fervent press of their minds, a moment of clear, perfect concentration, they found the Force and the Force, as always found them.

*****

Rey woke up with a start.

She was laying beside a fire, curled up like a lemcat in the dirt. The tattered remains of Kylo’s cloak was tucked over her. Her mouth tasted of old blood. She was, she realized with a start, somehow alive.

“You’re awake,” Kylo said. Nearby, but not too close.

She sat up carefully, cataloguing the aches in her body, the pains. “So it would seem.” It was dark outside the ring of the fire; above them, the night sky and no moon; around them, the soft scuttle of unfamiliar creatures and trees. It took her a moment to find him. “Are you hurt?”

He made an odd sound, a rough kind of laugh. “Yes. But not mortally so. I was afraid you’d cracked your head.”

Rey touched her hair gingerly, probing, and felt a knot on her crown. She winced. “Not cracked. But very nearly."

“On the control panel.” His voice was rapid fire, staccato. “There was blood. I helped you get out.”

She felt a rush of irritation. “I’m sure I didn’t need your help.”

“Yes, you did. I had to carry you.”

She squinted at him across the fire, his features sharpened by the firelight, the scar on his cheek most of all. “Do you want me to say thank you? Is that what all this is about?”

He blinked. “No,” he said after a moment, the word soaked in hesitation. “I just wasn’t sure if you remembered.”

“How long have I been asleep?”

“Unconscious, you mean? For a while. I was worried.”

The was something in his face then, a flash of momentary softness. It reminded her of the throne room, of the smell of burning flesh and scorched metal and the yaw of the stars in his eyes when she’d touched him, stretched her palm across the damp flush of his cheek.

“I won’t join your Empire,” she’d said, ignoring her own tears, sliding her thumb amongst his. “Come back with me, Ben. You can. I want you to. I need you to.”

“Why?” His eyes in hers, great black fathoms now scattered through with shards of bright, burning light.

“You know why.”

His arm had found her waist then and he’d held her, clung to her, as if she were his very last chance at escape. The same question again, louder: “ _Why_?”

She turned her face to his. Their mouths were but a breath apart. “Because I need you. You can feel it, can’t you? I know you can. I’ve seen it.”

He made a rough sound, as if his soul were bruised, as if by her words alone she’d trampled upon it. “Yes.”

The moment her lips brushed against hers, she knew, she knew with absolute certainty that he’d never held anyone like this, never wanted to, never had another being’s mouth touch his own, and yet, as he opened himself to her, speared his gloved fingers through her hair, it was as if they’d kissed a thousand times. As if they’d always held each other like this.

“There’s a shuttle,” Kylo had said when they parted, his hands stretched up the length of her back. “Nobody knows about it; it was Snoke’s. But we have to hurry.”

And then they’d run, Luke’s lightsaber tucked in her belt. Kylo hadn’t let go of her hand.

Now, though, he seemed afraid to touch her. Afraid to get too close.

“I build a shelter,” he said, his voice that same monotone gray. “It isn’t much. I’ll make a better one in the morning.”

“A shelter?” She sat up higher and looked about. There were no signs of the shuttle. Surely there couldn’t be, so severe had been the crash. “Out of what?”

Kylo actually smiled. “What do you think? Trees and leaves.” He climbed to his feet, stepped around the fire and held out his hand. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

He led her towards a garden of tall shadows, of branches and trunks that seemed to lift towards the infinite. Ten paces, then twenty, and the light of the fire had faded, a distant spark behind them in the night. But she wasn’t cold; far from it. The heat of the day had left the earth beneath them warm, almost vividly hot. Around them was the odor of life, of things growing and thing dying and little shoots of new things creeping up from underneath. There was sweet smell on the wind, too, one that took her a moment to identify: flowers, she thought, a small spark of delight. Wherever they were, there were flowers.

“Here,” he said, bringing them to a halt. “It’s right here. Duck your head a little, there you go. Now. Step in.”

It was closely woven, the canopy she stood beneath, a basket of sorts woven from branches and broad, rusty smelling leaves that stretched up and over her head. She could stand up under it, barely, but Kylo, when he slipped in behind her, had to nearly bend at the waist.

“We’re between two trees,” he said. “There’s a trunk on either end of it, see?”

She couldn’t, not a kriffing thing, but she could stretch her palms out and touch one, then step a little to the right and find the other.

“You made this?” she asked, incredulous. Her smile felt a mile wide. “Where in the worlds did you learn?”

He lowered himself to the ground. “A place called Endor. We spent a lot of time there when I was a kid. There are these being there who make their homes in the forest. Have for thousands of years.”

“They taught you this?”

“Yes.” Rey could hear him smiling. “Why do you sound so surprised?”

She sank to her feet. The gentle breeze that blew through the opening ruffled her battered tunic, wiped the sweat that had gathered at the edge of her hair. “Because I am, I suppose.”

The ground was softer here. There were fewer rocks than beside the fire, something beneath her palms that felt like moss.

“You can sleep here,” Kylo said. “I’ll sleep by the fire.”

“This is big enough for both of us.”

He shifted a little. Their shoulders brushed.

“One of us has to keep watch.”

“Ben, we’re nowhere near the Empire. The last jump put us two parsecs out, at least.” Which was probably why the ‘craft had gone promptly to pieces; they weren’t built for big jumps like that, especially when they were simultaneously falling apart.

“It’s not the Empire I’m worried about. Or your friends. There’s life on this planet--can’t you hear it? And we’ve no idea how hostile it might be.”

“Is that your operating presumption? That everything new you encounter in the universe will be hostile?”

“Yes,” he said simply. “Isn’t yours?”

“No,” she said, just as blunt. “It isn’t.”

They sat there for a moment, listening to the sounds of an unknown world, each marvellng, Rey supposed, at the strangeness of the other, of their situation, of the bond that had put them together only hours ago and had sent them hurtling, spiraling, to some unknown corner of space.

“I’m not afraid,” Kylo said suddenly. “That’s strange, don’t you think? I should be.”

She closed her eyes and leaned against him. “I haven’t been, either,” she said. “This whole time.”

“Even when we were falling?”

“Mmm.” She yawned, tipped her head on his shoulder. “Especially then.”

The world was warm, a basket of shadows, Kylo’s arm around her for a moment, then easing her gently back. She stretched out on the earth and she felt his lips on her forehead, a quick, gentle caress.

“Rey,” Kylo said softly. He touched her cheek, smoothed a hand through her hair. He smelled of fresh leaves and of ash, of blood and the clean water that came after. “Good night.”


End file.
